


Carry On Anyway

by Anarhichas



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anarhichas/pseuds/Anarhichas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time there lived a boy who was in love with the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carry On Anyway

Once upon a time there lived a boy who was in love with the sea.

Armin couldn’t quite remember the first time he’s seen the ocean. He’d been young, even though it hadn’t felt like it at the time. He liked to think of how romantic it must have been – the surf, the taste of salt, the cutting wind and endless horizon. He liked to imagine himself falling to his knees and touching the round stones wet and crusty with brine, tears in his eyes and a smile so wide it hurt. His heart must have beat like a drum to the hiss and hush of waves.

It was probably true. He did remember that that was what had happened almost every day for the first few months. To say it had been what had happened in the very beginning wasn’t so large a stretch.

.

The sea wasn’t his first love. Still, it had taken a while for him to realise that it was his current.

Back from his first stay by the ocean Armin had fretted. Why did he feel so lonely, sitting in his little room in the countryside town? He hadn’t been lonely before. At least, not since long ago.

Why did his hands stutter and itch? Why did company he’d previously enjoyed suddenly fall short? What was missing from the air?

Restless, unsmiling, he’d been lying in bed and chanced across the memory of the book his grandfather had once owned, so long ago. That night he packed and by morning was gone.

There weren’t any houses by the shore, so he slept out on the heather strewn hills, waking up damp and so cold it took the whole of the next day to warm back up again. Still – the sight of the water made him smile. He walked back and forth to the nearest village, working and scraping up enough money to hire a couple of builders. They looked at him like he’d gone mad, but Armin was used to that by now.

He stood on the edge of the sea. He laughed at the antics of little spider-like animals, waving their strange clawed legs, and watched birds drop hard shelled creatures onto rocks to break them open. He washed his feet in the salt water and felt his heart swell so much he thought it might burst.

.

He wrote to Eren, Mikasa and Jean as often as he could, individual letters on crisp, expensive paper.

_How are you doing? A strange creature got washed up from the storm last week. It looked a bit like a giant fish, only it had a dog-like face and fur, with no gills. Or maybe it looked a bit like a giant dog, only it had fish-like fins and tail, with no hind legs. Either way it was still alive so I watched it from a distance. Eventually it went into the water and swam away. I’ve been looking but haven’t seen anything like it since._

.

Armin spoke to the sea, occasionally. He’d sit on the fat pebbles, ignoring the pain of the leg that had broken badly and never quite healed, and describe what inland looked like, or what he’d eaten for breakfast, or what he thought the weather might be later that week. Gulls interrupted and the water in the rocks mumbled over him. More often he sat in silence and listened. It felt better than talking did. Fuller. His words had never been any good, anyway.

.

Though he rarely admitted it, he knew it wasn’t right. He knew his heart shouldn’t be able to fit something like the ocean, not in the space shaped for other people. Sometimes he hated himself. Was he ill? Sometimes he hated the water – hated the crash of breaking waves and the wet morning mist. Hated the unmeasurable vastness, encompassing more than he could ever dream of knowing, ever changing even as it stayed fundamentally the same, year after year after year.

Then he always felt guilty. It was his fault, after all, not the ocean’s.

.

When Armin took himself in hand, stroking himself to messy completion, he tried not to think of anything but heat and damp friction. More often than not he thought of Jean, and the times they’d shared as inexperienced teenagers, slowly growing more experienced together. Sometimes he’d realise half way to orgasm that he was crying. Sometimes he’d carry on anyway.

.

_Dear Jean_

_I hope you’re well. There hasn’t been much interesting happening, at least where I am. I fixed the gap in the floorboards that had been letting in a cold breeze, which took me two whole days. I’m glad it’s done though, what with winter coming on._

_I did a stupid thing yesterday. I couldn’t sleep, so I went outside in my nightclothes and lay down on the beach. I’ve told you before how the water rises up and down – I should have thought of that, I don’t know why I didn’t. Either way when I woke up I was half drowned, and had to swim to get back to shore. But I didn’t want to leave – and don’t tell Mikasa or Eren, they’ll only be mad at how stupid I was – so I stayed there, shuffling up then down the beach to keep my shoulders at least on land. I only went back to my house when the sun came up and I started to worry that someone might see me. That was yesterday and I only just got the feeling back in my toes. My leg still hurts, worse than ever. Please don’t tell the others this either, but that morning when I realised I had to get up I cried and cried until I felt sick._

_Sorry, I just felt like I needed to say that. Or write it, as it were._

_I wish you were here._

_._

The sea was grey and choppy, and Armin grinned as the spray prickled at his skin. He’d been away, buying odds and ends that the local market didn’t offer, and returning to the salt water sting and curved horizon felt like falling into a warm bed, bone tired.

'Did you miss me?' he asked, and smiled as water hissed through the stones in the ocean's non-reply.

.

'Excuse me!'

Armin turned in fright, and waited reluctantly as the woman came jogging up to him. ‘I’m sorry, but, you forgot these,’ she said, and looked like she wanted to say more but didn’t. Perhaps it was Armin’s face, eyes shying away under their greying fringe, or his trembling skin. She bit her lip, handed over the three letters she’d picked up from the water’s edge, and turned to go.

'Don't come back,' Armin blurted. Just the sight of her on this precious land, on these pebbles that belong to the ocean, terrified him. She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't have touched the letters. What if she'd done something terrible to the water?

The woman looked at him, expression unreadable, then walked away quickly. The letters in Armin’s hand shivered in the wind as he looked down at them. The ink hadn’t bled into the white background yet, the paper still neat and straight. _Eren_ ; _Mikasa_ ; _Jean_ , he read.

He waited until he was sure he was alone, then took the letters back to the edge of the sea. He laid them down, forcing himself this time to stand guard, and thanked the salt water that filled his eyes, blinding.

Then he went home empty handed, walking slowly on old, worn out bones. Lying on the bed he listened to the sound of ocean outside, and let the water fill up the empty shapes in his heart.


End file.
